Inciting Investigations

Chapter 7

Birdy Anders

Birdy looked at the clock on her phone once again. Her brother was set to arrive in twenty minutes with his girlfriend. He was also apparently bringing Magnus, Juli, and Badger along with him, and Holiday was bringing Merica like always. So they had a lot of guests coming over.

She didn’t like that Cyrus was bringing his other friends, but she knew that she couldn’t argue much against it. He had said that they were such huge parts of his life, so he felt like the rest of the family should get to know them better. He had even mentioned that he hoped that she and her parents would even start to consider them all family as well as he did. She didn’t think that that would happen, but it was a nice thought for him in the end.

She looked back again and saw that a whole whopping two minutes had passed since she last checked. She had been doing this for the past thirty minutes because she just wanted him to arrive already. She knew that he might be a little late, and that was disappointing. But, then she reminded herself that he wasn’t even late yet. He still had some more time.

She rolled over, thinking that if she just didn’t look at the clock, then maybe the time would fly way faster. That turned out to not work in the slightest because the next time that she eagerly grabbed for her phone just to check one more time, she realized that it hadn’t even been a whole minute. She groaned and tried not to be too horribly let down by how time worked.

She was well aware that she was just maybe being only barely slightly impatient for the events of the night to start, but could you blame her? She so rarely found joy in just being around a person the majority of the time that she spent with them. Even Cora and Dora were pretty neutral to her. Sure, there would be sometimes that she would laugh with them and find natural joy just because she was in their presence, but mostly she only found that they were people she could find tolerable and make a part of everyday routines gladly.

However, Cyrus was a different story. She had always felt a bit isolated for a variety of different reasons. Whether it be because she was younger or the only hispanic one or for a multitude of different reasons, she didn’t feel like she ever fit in. That was, except for with her siblings. Even though they were older and would have probably much preferred being around kids their own ages, they always made time for her and included her in everything.

They used to pretend they were going on adventures growing up. Defeating evil corporations and fighting robots that had strangely detailed backstories, courtesy of her and Holiday.

It had always been so much fun, she thought that it was the best thing in the entire world. No one was better than her siblings, and no one played better games than they did. That was how it was in her mind, at least. She knew that it had all been just childish thoughts and shenanigans. But looking back, those silly stories were her whole world when she was a kid.

She hadn’t been ready to let them go at first. When Cyrus disappeared, Holiday didn’t like playing those games anymore. Whenever she asked Holiday if she would go outside and create some new odd or wacky plotline with her, the older girl would just say that she was too tired to do much of anything. Then, she would go up to her room and play sad music while crying. Birdy was pretty sure the questions about the games only reminded her sister of what they had lost, and nowadays, she felt really bad about doing that.

Back then, she had been a kid, so of course she didn’t understand the effect that her words were having on Holiday, but she still felt the same. Nonetheless, also because she was a kid, she hadn’t wanted to stop playing. She thought that Cyrus would come home at some point, even after she had seen that horrible wretched photo. She had always thought he would come back and want to play with them again, so they had to have tons of fun games ready for him because her brother only deserved the highest quality of play pretend.